Class is about education and opportunities. The modern world is different from the world Marx inhabited so in a sense claiming to have any 'class' is a little redundant.

However, the point remains: You have been to university and you are well educated, so your chances in the world are wide and varying compared to someone who would have little or no schooling and then leaves to work in a factory.

The whole point is about opportunity, surely? And in fact the class system, as a branding, is incredibly patronising, no matter which 'class' you happen to be in.

Socialist revolution is really always going to come from the middle-classes, i.e. people who feel they should be better off but can't become upper class and so decide they will make a utopian society where the working classes are theoretically better off because everyone is.

Most of society is probably not ambitious. I don't think intelligence matters too much really: if you're not ambitious your intelligence probably won't have much effect on society and if you're ambitious you're quickly going to have to learn things, surely?

it's just when you go to university by many definitions you do become middle class. You can be working class and be ambitious and intelligent until you go to university by which time the same person would be middle class and ambitious and intelligent.

Teachers represent the bedrock of the 'middle class' and yet my experience of University was that people who got 3rds tended to become teachers. I'm not saying they were stupid because they weren't, it's about ability to do well in a physics degree in exams, not to explain concepts and teach others.

Anyway, yes education is what Middle Class is all about: it's what you can achieve and how much you'll be able to move yourself.

Obviously there will always be exceptions but in general that's what it means.

as Theo said. Of course there are many definitions but it is usually an aggregate of education and employment. Most people these days are middle class basically by traditional classifications.
I don't think it matters really but Im always interested when people claim they are not (not saying you're necessarily not!).

surely nobody ever actually refers to themselves as being a certain class? Therefore other people will ascribe it to you anyway (if they want to/are that sort of person) based on other criteria. It's an irrelevance to most people and will never come up so it's also ultimately unimportant what class you consider yourself to be. To those who it matters to, they will label you like that anyway.

it's about JimmyHuntspill making the comment as if that aspect mattered. To then claim otherwise is a bit pointless. Maybe I just hated all the holier than thou working class kids at my school who hated me for being middle class. Sorry. :D

My mum worked a shit job and is essentially working class in both background and learning.

My father is very much middle class but flunked out of uni and has never had a career, and in any case they divorced when I was 6 months old or something.

The point is, most of these kids were financially far better off than me, a 'posh' kid (I could tell by their leather jackets and latest clothes) but I definitely had better prospects than them because I was brought up in a middle-class environment.

with different interests and different knowledge on particular things...if i want to know something then i will come on DiS and someone will have the answer...anything from techy questions to books etc...then everyone likes a lot of the same music and the same type of social scene.